Showered with Love - Week 34

      Here I am sitting on the first day of week 34 and I, not being pregnant myself, am so anxious. I can't imagine how all my recent pregnant friends have felt wanting to be done with pregnancy and get this party going!

      The last time I posted, we had just finished the nursery.  After several weeks of hurricanes, power outages and lost weekends from working...now, its decorated and filled with goodies from our Baby Shower.

I got the ROYGBIV balloons for the front yard to mark the party place. It looks like the 'UP' house!

     We got handed a load of life in those few weeks.  A few days before the first guests arrived at the house...a few things went wrong. For starters, our 11 year old Labrador Retriever/mutt came down with a mysterious illness that enlarged her liver and made her basically immobile. She was barely eating and drinking, wouldn't move (I had to carry her inside and outside the house and up the stairs for bed).

she was just in so much pain. I couldn't fix it

      It was a terrifying few days. I found myself laying on the floor with Rudder the first night, telling her that she couldn't go yet. It wasn't her time. She's got a baby to watch over. We did tests, x-rays, and almost went to a specialist for a liver biopsy.  The vet said as long as she was eating, drinking and not getting worse that we should just wait and see what happens over the next few days.

by days 5 & 6 she was back to doing the Labrador wiggle on the floor

Thankfully, after 3 horrific days on day four she started getting better. By day 5 & 6 she was about 90% back to her normal self.

    Later that week...


     WATER STARTED POURING INTO THE NEW KITCHEN! Ok so it wasn't pouring, but it was dripping a lot past the new lights through the new ceiling. I couldn't find where it was coming from!

I took pictures in spaces I couldn't see with my phone trying to figure out what was leaking

     Finally I decided I was going to tackle the thing that I thought MIGHT be the problem (after I took apart the shower knob). There had been cracks in the grout in the corner of the shower floor on the side of the plumbing. I filled it with caulk. The water stopped flowing...fingers crossed.  The party was coming up.
      Dustin decorated the house for the party while I put a WHOLE lot of "lipstick on the pig," that is still the kitchen. 

Balloons, flower and some wonderful gifts!

Dining room decorations, pre-food

A few of the important onesies. Notice Wisconsin, Pride, & PSU!

I haven't had to buy balloons in...wait, as I write this...I don't think I've EVER bought balloons from a party store myself.  Whelp. More of that to come. Actually, I take that back. Next time I need to get helium filled latex balloons, I'm totally going to but the helium tank and balloons myself. It would have cost less than the 20 balloons I bought and had filled at the store.



The mylar balloons were stuck to the mirror. I saved $$ on those by filling them with the air compressor in the garage! So were the big latex balloons. We lost one in the duct tape process, but it looked like they were helium balloons weighted down with the feathers and the green garland. Good thing Dustin bought 3.




We hung a bunch of important and poignant onesies from the mantle in the TV room.  We also got some really awesome ones once we opened the gifts from the party. Since I am a Penn State alum and we're having our baby in Wisconsin territory and I have a bunch of friends who went to UW. I demanded they get me a Badger onesie. I'm really excited about that.


Amidst the party preparations were getting things finished in the Nursery AND the kitchen. We pushed A LOT to the last second there. But honestly like my friend, co-worker and new dad, Chris, said to me,
      "Dude, everyone knows you guys work on your house. No one is going to care if its unfinished."
So that helped us, just clean a few things up and organizing.
Check out the progress!  I'll post some full pictures when we have it all together, before and afters and progress, later.
 

someone moved the lamp...the light is uneven in the corner...

Dustin made the curtains, I made the bookshelf, the rocking horse is 32 years old

We broke down and bough the crib...because life happened.

Part of the allllmost finished kitchen

     We got so many gifts it was amazing. We got all the things we needed! Thank you to all of you that came and sent us gifts! (we're just starting to get going on thank you notes.)

     We bought the crib. I don't remember if I wrote in previous posts that I wanted to make it, but when the time was ticking down...just after the baby shower...sewage started backing up into the downstairs bathroom tub just HOURS after the last guests left the baby shower.  We called a plumber, he said the tanks were full. Septic crew came out, opened the tanks, dug up my new lawn...and the tanks are fine.  The plumbers came back and said we probably had some clogs and needed to replace the pipes in the basement.

There's your problem right there.

     This would mean that all the drain pipes that aren't vertical in the house would be PVC all the way out to the tanks. Let's do it. So it took 2 days but they worked very hard on getting things up and running the first day so we could shower and go to the bathroom.  These guys are great. The Plumber's Guild LLC if you're in Atlanta, Corey Wimpey and his crew are awesome.
     So we bought the crib because. We were done. The basement is still a little disorganized so it was just a bunch easier to do that.

Two days later, the guests all had left, and it was a rainy Sunday and we were driving home after going to see friends who couldn't make it to the party. On the way home as the drizzle and moisture from what was Nate...this happened.

This woman rear-ended my truck at a traffic light

     We were rear-ended at a light on the way home. As soon as it happened, Dustin yelled,
     "ARE YOU F*CKING KIDDING ME!?"
     Its currently in the shop being fixed. It'll have taken 2 weeks by the time I get it back.  To be fair, they're replacing my muffler, exhaust pipe, lift gate, bumper and associated items.  Its not like we're about to be getting into the last few weeks of a pregnancy and need to drive 14 hours in that car...its cool.

    The following weekend was pride weekend in Atlanta and we decided to forego ANY house stuff and just enjoy the weekend, because who knows what next year will be like. OMG we'll have a baby!

Friday night at the Pride kick-off Party at the Georgia Aquarium

     We really enjoyed the weekend.  We started it off by me, NOT working this year and having to catch the party toward the end. The Georgia Aquarium party is always the best.  This year the lights and dance floor in the ballroom were so freaking cool! LED globes that were animated to the DJs music. It was awesome.

There's not much to caption about this.

Pride in Piedmont Park on Saturday

Saturday we spent the whole day at the park, listening to music, hanging with our friends and their kids. Its a wonderful day. Next year, like I said is going to be interesting.  Lets see if I can get a tent, stroller, diaper bag, cooler, chairs, table...ugh I'm going to need a crew to help set up!

Waiting to step off in the parade for the Aquarium Sunday!

Come Sunday, we woke up from little sleep, and got ourselves to the starting line to the Pride parade. Our friends who work for the Aquarium asked us to volunteer to walk in the parade for the Georgia Aquarium.  Dustin and I picked up two umbrellas that were decorate to look like jellies and we danced and pranced our way to the end of the parade. When we passed the protestors, I did something completely out of character: I ran over to Dustin and kissed him passionately in public in front of all the hateful words. Nothing is better than fighting hate with LOVE.

      We're heading into the home stretch and last night started packing clothes for Beastie. This is incredibly stressful.  How much do we pack?  What will we need?  What WON'T we need?  We may or may not have had a few arguments the last few days/weeks.  Its been a test on communication and sensitivity. Who knows when we have to bug out. Dustin has his bug out bag ready to go and when I get my truck back everything will go in and stay in waiting on the phone call or my last day at work. Speaking of that. Our November schedule came out earlier today and it has my parental leave in it...can I tell you how sobering THAT was?? It's right there...in just about 30 days we head up to Wisconsin...if Beastie doesn't decide to make its own plans...